Menu

Freunde

Letztes Feedback

Meta

A "Bad Victory For Women"

This blog entry is about my own little presentation I had to do with a fellow member of our seminarcourse, like everybody else had respectively has to do, too.

Our source was an article about a woman who sued her employer because of mistreatment of her gender. She worked for the USB AG, an european financial company. Her job there was the one of a top manager. The reasons for her suing the company she worked for were more detailed that she regularily was treaten patronized in front of her colleagues. Besides, she had the impression that lucrative businesses were refused to her. This would be supported by the next argument, namely that she would be discriminated against due to not being invented to company outings as for instance baseball games or golf plays.She even brought in that she felt excluded and bullied by not being asked for an outing into a strip club. At this excursions, important or new clients would be represented so she would also be disadvantaged. But she further quoted the position of her desk as a reason for suing the USB AG because of mistreatment by positioning her desk among the one's of the lowly employees.

Actually, she went to court and won the process so far (althought USB planned to appeal) with a compensation money of a whopping 15,6 million Pounds. Before, she already got an annual wage of 350,000 Pounds as one of USB's best paid executives. This money should be better used for victims of child abuse or rape instead of the one's of mistreatment of gender, claimed the female author of the article, India Knight. She also approached that it would not be a single-case scenario of being bullied, this would also happen to men or in other institutions like in school. And these men or school-chilrdren in contrast would not run to the courts and sue their bully. Furthermore, the amount of the money of compensation woul in no case represent the heaviness of the committed crime. Additionally, the victim has already worked a long time for the bank and has a high working position there, so apparently she could live with the bullying quite well till then. The author also approached that some charges, as for example the one concerning the position of her desk, would be non-serious and ridiciulous. Especially criticized was that the victim after the won process spoke of a "triumph for sisterhood". There, India Knight contradicted clearly: The executive shouldn't claim her personal and in particular financial triumph as a victory for women. Because it would be a "bad victory" for them. Women who demand for equal treatment should stay their "man" if they get treaten like a man. So they could not deal with equal treatment if they receive it because men would treat each other simply in another way than they usually behave in appearance of a woman. When women get treaten in the same way, they would have got what they demanded and as a result shouldn't feel bullied and personally injured.

Moreover, there would still exist typical male bastions, thus men dominated and therefore usually no "women-friendly" environments, as for instance financial centres like the Wall Street or the city of London. There and at other places, too, would of course exist sexual discrimination and even sexual harassment. So in London there was a similar case where a female employee charged the financial company she was working for, this time it was Merill Lynch. She also won her process and got one million pounds of compensation.

So finally, you have to seperate real mistreatment or harassment because of gender and women who cannot deal with being treaten like a men, like a "grown-up" as the author expressed it in her article about this topic.